Everything
by Spun
Summary: -Most likely discontinued- Alec is killed on a demon hunt, and Magnus spends the first week after his death attempting to cope. How well he succeeds is up for debate. Major character death.


**Everything**

**Disclaimer: **The _Mortal Instruments_ series belongs to Cassandra Clare.

**Warnings: **In case you missed it in the summary, **MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. **I am taking the 'Alec' out of 'Malec'. Yeah, I went there.

**Notes:** This is... a bit of a gamble, really. I'm not accustomed to writing angst, much less deathfics, and I pretty much never write chaptered fics, so I suppose this is an adventure we'll be taking together, huh?

This will most likely be seven chapters in total and this one will probably be the longest. It ran away with me. There are all sorts of random references to other fics of mine, but this isn't related to any of those... I just have some persistent headcanons. xD

* * *

Magnus couldn't sleep.

Or, perhaps more accurately, he couldn't go _back_ to sleep. He'd dozed off some time ago, tucked securely beneath the covers, Chairman Meow snoozing away beside him, feeling quite safe and happy – and then woke up trembling and gasping, damp with perspiration, the last vestiges of his nightmare slipping away like water through his fingers.

It wasn't the nightmare that had him lying awake and listening to the clock in the hall chime every quarter-hour. He was quite accustomed to all sorts of awful dreams. What bothered him was his inability to remember it, because he had the vague sensation that it had been somehow important, but now there was nothing left except for a lingering sense of disquiet.

Raking his sweaty hair out of his face, Magnus sighed and rolled onto his back. "Sleep," he told himself. "It was just a dream."

From the other side of the mattress came a murmur, too soft to understand, and the silky sound of skin rustling against fabric. Magnus looked over. Alec was sound asleep, untroubled by his dreams, head pillowed on his arms. Gently, so not to wake him, Magnus tucked a stray lock of Alec's hair behind his ear and ran his thumb over the curve of his bare shoulder. Alec's fingers twitched against the pillow. He muttered something that sounded like "go away", which was almost definitely not directed at Magnus because Alec could hold entire conversations in his sleep, but Magnus took it as his cue to stop touching and try to sleep. He settled back down and closed his eyes.

Just as he'd finally begun to drift back into a pleasant dreamland, Alec's phone went off.

"_Hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really don't like you…_"

Magnus grinned into the darkness. Alec started to stir, slowly – he buried his face in his arms, first, like he was trying to block out the world. Then he exhaled, snuffled, and turned his head again, peering at Magnus though sleep-fogged eyes. "Is that my phone?" he mumbled.

"Yes. It's Jace," Magnus said. Alec groaned and smacked him on the chest. "_Ow_. That was uncalled for."

"If you don't stop changing my ringtone, I swear I'm going to cut your throat while you're asleep," Alec said, leaning over Magnus to rummage through the untidy pile of discarded clothing next to the mattress.

"You will not."

Alec just gave him a look that said _try me_ and curled up against Magnus's side, phone in hand. "Hello?" he yawned. Magnus snaked an arm around him and absently traced random shapes across his back. "Okay, so what is… what do you mean you don't _know_? Oh, that's great. Where?" He began detangling himself from Magnus and Magnus reluctantly let him go. "All right, I'll be there as soon as I can. Just don't go running in and get yourself killed before I show up. Bye."

By the time Magnus had dislodged Chairman Meow from his stomach and sat up, Alec was already half-dressed – the lower half, to Magnus's disappointment. "Let me guess – he wants you to come help him kill something," he said, rubbing the grit from his eyes.

"Unfortunately." Alec yanked his sweater on (backwards, but since he ripped the tags out of everything, it didn't really matter) and bravely delved into Magnus's closet for his Shadowhunting gear. "He doesn't actually know what it is, either."

"_Lovely_," Magnus said dryly, kicking the covers away.

"Yeah. He's ecstatic."

Magnus stood, his spine popping, and stretched his arms over his head. "Good Lord, what time is it?" he wondered, rubbing the grit from his eyes as he crossed the room. "Why can't demons ever threaten humanity during the _day_?"

"Because they'd crumble into dust?" Alec suggested. Magnus opened the bedroom door for him and made it five steps down the dark hallway before stumbling over an obstacle in the middle of the floor.

"Damn it!" Catching himself _just_ before he became intimate with the cold, hard floor, Magnus massaged his aching toes. "Son of a _bitch_…"

"Don't talk about my mother like that," Alec said mildly, buckling his weapon belt.

"Don't leave your boots in the hallway where you _know_ I'll trip over them," Magnus replied, kicking one of the offending objects over.

"Oh, suck it up, princess." Alec shoved his feet into his boots and leaned down to tie the laces.

"You're so _darling_ when you haven't had enough sleep."

"Shut up." Alec leaned in and kissed him, and Magnus tried very hard not to think about how the tongue which swept briefly across his lower lip had been licking a wet stripe up the inside of his thigh a few short hours ago, because this _really_ wasn't the time. He didn't entirely succeed, so it was probably a good thing when Alec stepped back just a moment later. "I'll be back… soon. Maybe. I hope. Don't wait up, I have no idea how long this'll take."

Magnus reached up to brush Alec's uncombed hair out of his eyes, and it immediately tumbled back to wherever it felt like being. He wrote that off as a lost cause, touched his lips to Alec's forehead, and murmured, "Be careful, okay?"

"I will," Alec said quietly. He looked so tired, and for a moment, Magnus wanted nothing more than to drag him back into bed and hide him from everything awful in the world. But Alec would never have consented to that – he may not have particularly _enjoyed_ Shadowhunting, but he would rather die than let his siblings go out there without him. "I'm –"

"_Hate is a strong word, but I really, really, really don't like you…_"

"- going to kill you," Alec finished, fishing his phone from his pocket. Magnus smiled sweetly. "What? I'm _going_, all right? Give me a break, I just woke up. Some of us sleep at night." Magnus thought about pointing out the inaccuracy of that statement – they'd only succumbed to sleep about two hours ago – but then the front door slammed shut and Alec was gone.

Funny how the apartment felt empty when Alec wasn't in it, even though Magnus had lived there for decades without ever finding it a lonely place. He sighed and scrubbed his face with his palms. It was four a.m. and there was no point in trying to go back to sleep now, since he'd inevitably fail. He supposed that was one of the hazards of dating a Shadowhunter – sending him off to kill a demon and then lying wide awake at home, wondering if he was all right, if he was hurt, if he needed Magnus's help and couldn't get in touch with him in time. Rather than condemn himself to hours of self-torture, he made his way to the kitchen for a very early breakfast.

Chairman Meow was already there when Magnus flicked on the light, balanced along the back of the sink like some sort of furry gargoyle, headbutting the faucet and whining. "Sorry, kitty," Magnus said, opening the fridge, "no bathtime today, all right?"

Most cats hated water. Chairman Meow liked to play in the sink, swim in the downstairs apartment (he had no idea how Agnieszka and Dominika had gotten a _pool_ put in), and would cry pitifully if Magnus shut him out of the bathroom while he was showering. Once or twice he had managed to run the water into the sink so he could merrily splash around amid Magnus's dirty dishes, but more often than not he couldn't figure out which way to push the handle. Looking put-out by Magnus's refusal to indulge his unnatural tendencies, the cat leapt off the counter and stalked out of the room. "Don't sulk," Magnus called after him as he turned on the stove, "it's unbecoming."

He was halfway through his eggs and bacon when he got a phone call from a girl asking what she should do about the army of ducks crowded around her front steps. "I'm the High Warlock of Brooklyn, dear. Call Animal Control," he advised.

"I was going to, but they're like… breathing fire." There was a funny roaring sound in the background. "Oh, there they go again. Crap, I hope the landlord doesn't charge me for that."

Maybe Will had been onto something with that whole duck paranoia of his. "I'll be there as soon as I can," he said. "You might want to have a fire extinguisher handy."

If he'd thought today would be an easy, non-strenuous sort of day, he was quickly disabused of that notion. Not an hour later, a vampire called, requesting help after he'd fed off of a poisoned dog. That was followed by a mystifying epidemic which caused the affected werewolves to sprout horns, a nixie asking him to locate a missing family heirloom for her, and a man whose species was a mystery wanting to know if his girlfriend was cheating on him. Magnus almost told him to consult a Magic 8 Ball, but it was a paying job, so he accepted. Thusly, he left his apartment just after five a.m., and didn't make his way back until nearly three in the afternoon, by which point he was downright exhausted.

"Everyone just expects me to snap my fingers and make things happen in a shower of sparks," he grumbled to himself as he climbed the rickety stairs. "_No_ regard for the amount of skill and energy it takes…" When he unlocked and opened the door, he was greeted by a slightly depressing silence and no sign of life. He imagined a tumbleweed rolling down the hallway as he called, "Alec?"

There was no answer. Perhaps more telling, his boots weren't where Magnus was about to put his feet. Chairman Meow, on the other hand, came bounding out of the den and happily rubbed against Magnus's legs, purring up a storm. "Now _that_ is a proper welcome," he said, giving the cat's fluffy ears a scratch.

He rang Alec on his way to take a shower. The call went straight to voicemail. "It's just me, darling. Call me back when you get this, all right? I love you." It was unusual but not unsettling for Alec to be out of touch – if he'd crashed at the Institute after the hunt, he could've gotten caught up in whatever the rest of his family might be doing. Or he might be injured and was resting at home, in which case Magnus would hear about it sooner or later. Or he might have even come back, found Magnus absent, and gone off somewhere.

To Magnus's concern, there was still no response when he got out of the shower. Magnus squashed down the tendril of anxiety curling in his stomach and left to buy himself some bubble tea. He deserved a treat after a day like today. But even strawberry milk tea and tapioca pearls couldn't soothe his nerves, and when he returned to find his apartment silent and uninhabited (besides the cat sunning himself in the bedroom), he decided enough was enough. "You'd better have a damn good reason for making me worry like this," he muttered, setting his cup down on the table and rooting through his jacket for his phone. "Do not make me come over there, Alexander." Normally, he didn't fret when Alec was out of contact for a while – he did have his own life outside of Magnus, after all – but not bothering to let him know if he was okay after a hunt was unacceptable. Alec _always_ called if he wasn't coming back to the apartment.

Just before he pressed the speed-dial button that would ring Alec's phone again, something caught his eye. Amongst the scattered debris from his previous meal was a sheet of notebook paper with a rune scrawled on it, conspicuous simply because it hadn't been there when he'd left. Usually, he only got rune-mail from Shadowhunters who were in Idris, since just about everyone else had a cell phone nowadays. He put his phone aside and unfolded it curiously.

_Magnus,_

_Alec's dead. The demon we were fighting got him. He was gone in seconds. I'm so sorry._

_-Isabelle_

Magnus got three words in and the world shattered.

_Alec's dead._

_Alec's dead._

_Alec's dead._

_I'm so sorry._

Magnus crashed into the nearest chair without realizing he'd done so. He couldn't hear anything over the loud buzzing that had filled his ears. His vision had hazed over. He couldn't _breathe_.

His fingers quivered, and he squeezed them around the letter so he wouldn't drop it. The letter… Magnus pinched his hip, hard, and the resulting burst of pain cleared the static from his head. This didn't mean _anything_. It was all too easy to replicate another person's writing, either by hand or by spell, or she could have been forced to write it by someone else – someone who wanted Magnus vulnerable. He had to maintain control until he found out exactly what was going on.

Magnus took his phone up again and scrolled through his contacts until he found Isabelle's number. First things first, he needed to find out whether or not she'd written that letter, because it was entirely possible that she hadn't.

The phone rang once, twice, three times… Magnus dug his nails into the underside of the chair, drumming his heel against the floor, suddenly brimming with nervous energy. Finally, right before it switched over to voicemail, she picked up. "Hello?" Isabelle said, sounding like she had a terrible cold.

"Isabelle," Magnus began, "I just got a letter –"

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"No, let me finish, did you –"

"It happened so fast," Isabelle interrupted, her voice quavering. "That thing – whatever it was – it came at him and he – he didn't _move_ – and then... he was gone. We couldn't do anything for him." She choked on a sob. "It was so fast, I don't think – he _couldn't_ have felt any pain."

The kitchen tilted dangerously. Had Magnus not been gripping his chair so tightly, he would have fallen right off of it.

"Magnus," she said once she'd stopped sniffling, "was Alec – was he acting _differently_ earlier?"

"What?" he said numbly.

"He… when he finally showed up, he was acting sort of _off_ – he seemed really upset or bothered by something. And when we actually went after the demon – I don't _know_, there was just something _wrong_, we all saw it, and he didn't _move_! He had enough time – Jace yelled at him to move – he could have gotten out of the way!" She was nearly wailing now. Usually, Magnus was severely unnerved by people crying, but right now, he barely even registered her distress.

"What are you implying?" he asked faintly.

"I don't know. I don't _understand_."

"He didn't –" Magnus's voice cracked and he swallowed hard, tightening his shaking fingers around the edge of the chair until it hurt. "He wasn't trying to kill himself. He _wouldn't_."

"I don't know what he did. We're never going to know."

"Isabelle –"

"I've got to go, my father's coming home," she said. When Magnus didn't respond, she whispered, "Goodbye," and hung up.

The phone slipped out of Magnus's nerveless fingers and clattered to the table.

He sat there for a long time, knuckles pressed to his lips, a chorus of _it can't be true, there must be a mistake, he isn't dead, he can't be dead, it's not true_ whirling around in his head. Alec was nineteen, smart and shy and sweet and much too lovely to die. Being a warlock meant many of the people Magnus had dated at one point or another died, but only two had actually done so while they were still in a relationship. Poor Kristine had been murdered by vampires, not so much because she was a werewolf, but because she was black, and Carey had accidentally blown himself up while testing out a spell he'd invented. They had been different, though. They weren't serious relationships. They weren't _Alec_. And Alec couldn't be dead because they had only been dating for a year and Magnus no longer knew how to live without him. Anyway, it would be terribly ungrateful of Alec to die after Magnus had stood in the Institute's infirmary and worked himself to exhaustion saving his life only a year ago. Alec wouldn't do that to him. He couldn't be dead.

There was a noise in the hallway. Magnus's head whipped around so fast his neck popped, but the source was just Chairman Meow having it out with a crinkly ball.

Maybe this was some kind of awful, sick joke. He disregarded the fact that even Jace, who was a spectacular asshole at the best of times, wouldn't stoop so low. It was a horrible joke, some test to make sure Magnus wouldn't just go right back to his rather man-whorish ways the moment he thought Alec was gone. Well, he wasn't falling for it. Soon Alec would come home and everything would be fine and Magnus could turn Jace into a teaspoon.

"He's not dead," Magnus said out loud. The words didn't sound as firm as he'd intended them to be. "He's not dead. He's just late." His chair screeched against the linoleum as he stood up quickly – perhaps too quickly, because the room wavered a little. He clung to the edge of the table until it passed and left the kitchen.

The dizziness came and went along the arduous trip to his bedroom. His legs didn't want to go where he directed them, and turning the doorknob suddenly seemed an insurmountable task. He felt like he was under water, or drunk, or maybe just caught in a waking nightmare. "He isn't dead," he reminded himself, closing the door behind him.

Alec's ragged old quilt was where he'd left it earlier, sandwiched between the mattress and Magnus's purple comforter. Magnus tugged it loose and ran his fingers along the fraying edge. Alec was _so_ attached to it, to the point that he'd tote it back and forth between the Institute and Magnus's apartment depending on where he was sleeping. Calling it a security blanket within his earshot was risking death, dismemberment, disembowelment, and all manner of other unpleasant D-words, but it was exactly that. Magnus didn't care – he wasn't the sort of person to deny anyone their security. And now he curled up on the bed, close enough to the window so he could watch the sidewalk in front of the building, and wrapped _himself_ in Alec's quilt.

"You aren't dead," he whispered into the worn fabric. "You can't be dead. It's getting late. Come home now, okay?"

He stayed awake that night, watched the moon rise and fall and the sky lighten from velvety black to a beautiful pale pink, and Alec did not come home.

* * *

Please don't kill me.

Reviews are wonderful, and they will also inspire me to get my ass in gear and write the next chapters faster. ;)


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